


The Faceless Old Man Who Secretly Lives In Your Home

by TansyPoisoning



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Force-Feeding, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kidnapping, Non-Graphic Violence, Obsession, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23846230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TansyPoisoning/pseuds/TansyPoisoning
Summary: Misplacing things is normal, isn’t it? People do it all the time. It’s not like someone broke into your home and started messing with your stuff, right?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 11
Kudos: 72





	1. The Faceless Old Man Who Secretly Lives In Your Home

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm always losing my shit. Originally from Tumblr, but I decided to post it here too.

You lose a lot of things.

You say you need to be better organized. You promise yourself you’ll put stuff away once you’re done using them, that you’ll choose and stick with a place to keep each of your belongings, but you never do – and for that he’s grateful.

“It’s not weird,” you tell someone on the phone “things go missing all the time. It’s not a big deal. I’m going to find it eventually.”

There’s silence, and then you laugh. It’s an adorable sound, a giggle like wind chimes and a bubbling stream, and he has the urge to kill whoever is on the other end of the line.

He knows exactly what he’d do. He’d creep into your room as you slept (as he did every night) unlock your phone (he knew the password by heart) see who in the list of contacts you had last talked to, then find them and squeeze their neck until their skull popped off. It wouldn’t be hard.

But he resists the impulse for you. He remembers how sad you were the first time he did it.

Because he can’t protect you like he knows he should without making you cry, he’s glad you misplace your things. He’s sure he’d die if he couldn’t get close to you like that, if all he could do was watch from inside the walls.

The walls smell a little like you, but they’re a lonely place.

He pilfers a thing or two, gives most of them back, but not before altering them in some way. Sometimes he rips off a piece or scratches the side, but sometimes he just holds them very close to his heart for a while. He feels this changes them in some way - rots them from the inside, leaving the outside perfect, like the shiny red apple he stole from your kitchen once and returned weeks later.

He likes the idea of ruining your things, just to make you aware of him in some way. He’s good at waiting, staying hidden until the exact last minute. He knows the importance of being discreet when it comes to fulfilling his duty. He can’t just let you know he’s there - it could ruin everything - but he can’t help shrugging off his training a little, give you something that could aid you in discovering his presence.

You, sweet naive creature that you are, never do.

He doesn’t know why he stays. Those are not his orders - he cannot remember when he last received orders. He feels compelled to, mesmerized by each of your habits, studying you with a purpose not even he knows.

He doesn’t like it when you leave the house, doesn’t like having to leave himself, and is even less keen when you go places where he can’t follow. He wants you near, always, but sometimes there are benefits to the distance.

He crawls out of the walls when you are asleep, messes with something here, pilfers another there, but he can never lie by you and feel your warmth seep into his cold bones - too risky. When you’re out he can take his rightful place in the bed, beside the soft you-shaped grove in the mattress. He likes to trace the silhouette with his fingers - the weak, human ones - and come just a little closer to be able to smell your shampoo. He can stay in that spot for hours, breathing you in, trying to touch you through the ether. Your lives are connected, even if you don’t know it, and he’s going to make sure things stay like it.

You can make a mess of your entire house, but he won’t let you make a mess out of what you have, and he has all the time in the world to make sure you wont blow things up for the two of you.

* * *

It’s a Saturday when you blow things up.

You’re not alone when you come home that day. He watches from his hiding spot, at first with curiosity, then with fury. His nails leave scratches in the wooden beams like your nails leave scratches in your partner’s back. He wants to sink his fingers into them as well; tear skin, pierce flesh and draw blood.

He doesn’t want to hurt or scare you again, but he can’t get that parasite off of you otherwise. He grinds his teeth and bears it, for your sake. He should just turn away, but he can’t. He tells himself he has to watch over you always, but there’s something else there, like sticking fingers in a fresh wound. The pain of your betrayal fills him with adrenaline.

He doesn’t want to hurt or scare you again, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.

It’s been a while since he last had to put all his training into action, but he doesn’t feel rusty at all. He breaks off a piece of one of the beams and gives it a few testing swings. It won’t matter if he destroys the house, because neither of you will be staying there for long.

He leaves his hiding place, as he does when you’re out. He’s thankful for the sound of the coupling, if only because it covers his footsteps. His plan is rushed and malformed, but it’s enough for him and it will be enough for you. So long as he’s there to protect you, it’ll be fine.


	2. A House With Two Windows in the Back and a Rhododendron Bush

The Soldat has one hand made of the hardest alloy known to mankind; the other is flesh, but he has more power in his pinky than the average human has in their entire body. He can jump from extraordinary heights, heights that would kill anyone else, survive and come out only a little worse for wear. He can withstand temperatures that should freeze the blood in his veins or scorch the skin off his bones. He can kill a man in a second in a thousand of ways and feel nothing.

In short, the Soldat was built for destroying, not for protecting. It’s obvious, if one gives it more than a passing thought, but he doesn’t think about things much. If he did, maybe he wouldn’t have taken you.

He wants to take care of you more than he could remember having ever wanted anything, but whoever said “where there is a will there is a way” mustn’t have had lethal weapons for hands. You’re soft in body and in heart, and he’s all sharp edges. You have limitations and needs that he didn’t foresee and that he doesn’t know how to deal with.

When you curl up in bed and stay there for the whole day he wishes bringing you back to your natural state – your state before him – would be as easy as hugging you, but that only makes everything worse. Sometimes you won’t eat, and although he’s loathe to tie you up in a chair and force a tube down your throat, he does it. He loves giving you baths, but he would enjoy those moments a lot more if you weren’t always crying in his arms.

Then there’s disease. He had never gotten sick, doesn’t know if he even can, and it’s not the kind of weakness he deals in, much more abstract and mysterious than the things he knows – the softness of the flesh, the frailty of the bones, how the blood gushes out. When he took you he only thought of that, and was careful not to squeeze you too tightly, although he wanted to. He didn’t count on disease.

The first time he caught you hunched over the toilet he felt the most curious thing. Pity, but he always pitied you, the only creature that could bring that in him. Behind that, warm and bright like a roaring fire there was something else. His eyes fell to your stomach, and he stared for longer than a dutiful partner should, given the circumstances. When he finally got down on his knees, he pulled the hair from your face and rubbed your back. He knew you were suffering, but he couldn’t quell that other feeling, so powerful and unfamiliar, when he thought of what you could be harboring. He never wanted to share you with anyone, but he hoped it was more than just wishful thinking on his part.

It wasn’t long until the fire was extinguished. You only got worse with time. Your skin was always hot and clammy, and you shivered even under all the blankets he covered you with. Sometimes you forgot where you are.

He curls up behind you and hugs you as you lay in bed because he doesn’t know what else to do and that’s the only time when you’ll let him. He runs his hands down your back as you lean over the side of the bed to hurl into the bucket he left there for you. It was mostly just water at this point.

Maybe things wouldn’t be fine.

* * *

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he remembers what he dreamed about: A house, a real house, not like this shed and the hidden bunker. It has windows through which the light comes in and curtains that blow in the breeze. It has doors and doorways through which you leave but always come back. It has the chiming crystal sound of your laughter, and then others. It has food that does more than just sustain, covers that do more than just keep the cold at bay. It’s a little clean and a little quiet, but not too much. It is big enough to fit all it needs to hold, and small enough to keep all those things close. The two windows in the back look like two eyes, and the rhododendron bush is pruned in the shape of a half-moon. It’s _happy_. He remembers the word, but not the feeling.

When he sees you in the dream you are smiling, and he thinks he might be able to grasp at what it means with time.

* * *

When he awakes everything is as it was before he slept. The walls and floor are still concrete and bar any sunlight from entering; the doors are still made of metal, so thick even he would have trouble breaking through; and you still toss and turn in your fitful sleep, delirious. He knows you can’t go on much longer. He might not know how to heal, but he’s seen enough humans hurt to tell when they’re close to expiring.

He knows the people who can put you back together, knows what they dress and talk like. There’s a city not too far from where he’s hidden you and he can be in and out in a minute. He’s afraid to leave; what if you need him? In the end, he decides to go. He gives himself orders, like he remembered receiving once. That way he knows he can’t fail.

He places a damp cloth over your forehead and leaves.

As he drives in the empty highway, he brings a hand to his chest. He feels the worst pain he’s ever felt, worse than bullet holes, broken limbs and _the shocks_ ; it constricts his rib cage and squeezes his throat so tight he can hardly breathe. His vision blurs, and he has to keep wiping his eyes to be able to see the road. It would all be worth it to keep you there.


	3. Self-Recognition Through the Other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll write an epilogue if there’s interest, and if I can decide how to do it. Otherwise, this is the end.

‘ _Asset_ ’ is what they called him; the people in white coats, the ones in black uniforms, and the ones in gray suits. They named him after what he was, they named him for how well he did his job, and his job was completing missions.

He has recollections of this time, and he knows deep in the marrow of his bones that the only thing that can keep him moving forward is an objective, a purpose.

 _You_ give him purpose.

From the moment he saw you he knew again that there was a reason for his existence, a reason to crack his fingers and shake his legs – something to do, something to be, and perhaps even more.

He knows it now, with a white coat firmly grasped in his metal claw, that there _is_ more. Protecting you is not the same as doing the bidding of his superiors. He had known himself as a weapon, as an instrument of death, but from the first moment he saw himself reflected in your eyes he realized, although he didn’t know how to put it in words then: He isn’t _something_ , he is _someone_.

He learns how to describe this when he walks out of the bathroom with blood on his hands and he sees you, healthier than you had looked in a while, hugging your knees to yourself and cowering in bed.

The doctor wasn’t helpful. He didn’t want to heal you, he made threats, so the Asset dealt with him the only way he knew. The way you look at him hurts. The knowledge that he has the power to touch you however he wants and yet he’ll never be able to break _that_ barrier hurts. He sees himself in your eyes and he doesn’t like what he sees, but he still sees himself, and that’s enough.

He makes you drink water and helps you back down. He sits on the other end of the room and waits for you to calm down, but he can’t wait long. You’re still shaking when he leaves.

He makes his way into town – _again_. The force of his grip leaves indentations in the steering wheel. There is not time to waste, but he can’t just take whichever medic he sees first. He has to watch them, find one who’s meek, and competent, and most of all _kind_. They must be kind because he can’t trust fear alone to guarantee they will heal you (but the he kept the body of the former doctor in the bathroom just in case).

He climbs up the wall of the hospital and crawls into the vents. He knows he must be more careful this time, because now there are eyes on the building. They might be trying to track him, they might be expecting him back, but it doesn’t matter; he can get past all of them.

It doesn’t take him long to find a suitable target, even less to slip into the room when he’s alone and knock him out. The Asset remembers that dead doctor in the bathroom said there weren’t enough resources to help you in the bunker, so the he pauses to take a briefcase with medical supplies as well.

He gets back to you just as the medic is awakening. The Asset drags him to where you’re laying and with a hand pressed into his shoulder, forces him to face you and tells him to help you.

This doctor is better than the other. He examine you, quiet for the most part, but sometimes stopping to ask the Asset questions about you. He answers about as well as he can, which is to say, not well. The medic fidgets when he’s done, wipes the nervous sweat running down his brow. He says he can’t help you with what he has there. He needs antibiotics, and parenteral nutrition, and other things the Asset has never heard of.

He considers killing the man. He fears he’s trying to take you away from him, trying to break through his skull and steal the very memory of you from his brain as well. He clutches his head, falls to the ground and screams like he hadn’t since they used to tie him to the chair and steal his memories. This wakes you, and soon there are three people weeping in three different corners of the room.

To know that there was nothing that he could do was to know that perhaps you wouldn’t be ill now if he hadn’t taken you, which was to know that he hadn’t been protecting you, not even from the start. Should he have remained hidden in your walls, always unable to touch you and therefore to hurt you? Should he have never listened to your lilting laughter, looked into your eyes? No, he cannot accept _that_ , so how could he be expected to accept anything else?

Your crying ceases, then the doctor’s, then his. The Asset knows, looking into your tired eyes, that something has to give. Could he _persuade_ you to live, to draw strength from some untapped pool he had no reason to believe existed? Could he threaten you with a worse fate if you dared to leave him, could he cut open his wrists and give you his life force if you would just keep existing, soothe his heart and tell him _this wasn’t his fault_?

No, it’s foolish. He’d seen many a person meet their death; he knows what’s at the end of that road.

He falters as he stands and stumbles to were he keeps the ropes. The doctor cries again when he’s being tied up, begs for his life, but the Asset isn’t listening. He tosses him in the back of the car then comes back to get you. He’s gentler this time.

He risks it all when he goes back to the hospital again, driving much faster than any car around him. He knows he can’t waste time, and he thinks, if worse comes to worst, it’ll be best if you die quickly, and best if he dies with you. He doesn’t think a car crash can kill him, but it might.

He leaves the car in the middle of the street, cuts the doctor free, barks at him to follow, then carries you out. He drops you in a chair in the hall and bounds out. He can’t be found, most of all not when you’re close to him. He escaped his handlers, but they’re still out there and looking for him, he’s certain. He had always been a risk to you, and he sees this now.

The Asset doesn’t go far. He follows you from behind the walls, finds a place to hide in the room they keep you in. He watches you, but only enough to make sure none of those people in white coats and blue uniforms are hurting you. He fears he’ll hurt you if he looks for too long, fears he’ll kill you. He doesn’t make his presence known, doesn’t even steal anything this time.

He was not meant to take care of things. He can’t do it, and he sees it now.

He stays hidden for days, too many to bother counting but too few for the task he’s entrusted himself, and none comes to bother you or look for him. It’s a relief, but it also means he has no reason to keep watch.

The Asset doesn’t know how long it takes for you to recover, to finally be able to walk on your own and to take care of yourself but it feels like it’s far too little. The longer he stays, the longer he wants to stay, but you mean too much for him to put his needs before yours now.

On the night before you are due to be discharged, while you’re asleep, he crawls out of the walls. For the last time this time. He watches you, he always watches you, but he hadn’t been this close for a while. Your breathing is quiet and steady, while his is loud and desynchronized. You look so serene, so _happy_. He thinks he’s a little happy too.

The Asset resists the urge to look back as he climbs out through the window of the room; he doesn’t know he’ll be able to leave without you if he does. All he can do for you, all he ever could do, was to stay away.

So, he does.


End file.
